Saturday, December 10, 2022

Dear Mr. Steinbrenner: Thank you for salvaging last year's runner-up team. Now what?

Dear Sir, 

Along with shaker cheese, here's another travel tip for your Italian vacation: 

Pinch the women! They love it! Especially the young, artsy-looking ones. The type who carry library books. Give a big. old, American nobble - a fanny tweak, a titty-twist, a cabbage grab! They'll know you to be a thoughtful, caring U.S. tourist, an ambassador of good will...

And speaking of good will, I have a thought:

The Yankees cannot trade their way to a championship. 

You tried last winter. We obtained Donaldson, IKF and that weightlifter catcher who fell apart. It didn't work. In fact, it haunted us all year. 

We cannot trade our way to a championship.

Right now, our main 2023 trade chip would be Gleyber, and I doubt he'll bring much, beyond a bullpen arm. We'll get nothing for Donaldson, next to nothing for Giancarlo, and the brother of next to nothing for DJ - all of whom are compromised by the weight of untenable contracts. Thus, we end up packaging them with prospects.

Have you seen the news back stateside? Fred McGriff has been elected to the Hall of Fame. A great one. Nearly 500 career HRs. 

We traded the Crime Dog for Dale Murray. Let that sink in. Dale Murray. Actually, we threw in Dave Collins and Mike Morgan, and the Blue Jays gave us Dale Murray and Tom Dodd.

McGriff's ascension should remind us of what inevitably happens whenever a team gets addicted to trading prospects. 

Imagine the 1980s if the Yankees hadn't traded McGriff, Doug Drabek, Al Leiter, Mike Lowell and Willie McGee... 

Listen: Our damnation may already be in stone. Before we deal away another youngster, let's take stock what we've already sent out the door. (OF Kevin Alcantara - a 6'6" Judgian giant - is now the Cubs' #3 ranked prospect, and pitcher Hayden Wisnewsk is #12 - just to name one trading partner.) We may have already screwed ourselves for the next decade. 

Sir, what I'm getting to is this: 

You are going to have to spend money. 

You are going to have to land a couple big free agents. Not just one. Several. They will be expensive. You might have to outbid the Mets. The tabloids will bark about all the money being spent. They'll Photoshop your face on dollar bills. It will get crazy.

But this is no time to deal more prospects. 

Do that, and one of these days, it will be you who gets pinched.

4 comments:

Rufus T. Firefly said...

Note to HAL:

Mafia kingpins absolutely love it when you pinch there mistress's butts.
Try it in Sicily. We won't regret it.

Rufus T. Firefly said...

Their not there

HoraceClarke66 said...

Hear, hear, Doug! Very true.

Mike Lowell was a Cashman special, in the late 1990s. But all those others...still makes my head hurt to think of them.

Dale Murray was absolutely one of the worst relief pitchers I've ever seen by the time he got to the Yankees, at age 33. I was in the stands on Opening Day, 1983, when he let up 6 earned runs in 3 innings, on a freezing cold day. Over the whole year, he allowed 113 hits in 94 innings. Completely awful.

McGriff was leading the league in homers and OPS by 25.

And then there was Willie McGee for Bob Sykes, Jay Buhner for Ken Phelps, Drabek for Rick Rhoden, and of course, Al Letter for Jesse Barfield. A generation, given away for nothing!

JM said...

El Duque, king of satire and wit, once again delights with a post asking the Yankees to NOT TRADE AWAY PROSPECTS! LOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!

Oh, man, that's really a good one...can you imagine? Not trading away prospects...what a wacky idea...